


Myth of the Cave

by elebuu



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angel of Truth, Emet-Selch, Gen, Multi, any-gender WoL, ascians - Freeform, if you're really into the Ascians please by all means refer to the expansion as Shadowbangers, irresponsible spitballing, shadowbringers, spoilerish?, the devil made me do it, the launch trailer sent me into Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 17:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19322353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elebuu/pseuds/elebuu
Summary: // SOCRATES: Whenever any of them was unchained and was forced to stand up suddenly, to turnaround, to walk, and to look up toward the light, in each case the person would be able to do this only withpain and because of the flickering brightness would be unable to look at those things whose shadows hepreviously saw. //





	Myth of the Cave

__

 

_“They **are** gods after a fashion, yes…” _

_______________________________________________

Hands falling on impossible images.

The ochre dreams of some people, without and before nations, charcoal-engraved fingertips spreading colour over imperishable stone.

The warrior’s hands are dwarfed tenfold by even the tiniest figures of the mural, the genuflected forms shaped so like human beings.

“Through prayer, and sacrifice,” his voice murmurs careful and even behind them. White gloves rest palms-down a space above the warriors’, upon the largest effigy. A jittering creek of curls and dreamtime filigree line the hips and the wings of this form, drawn as high and as wide as the height and breadth of this half of the cavern.

“The people of this time made manifest the will of this star.”

“I don’t understand what that _means_ ,” the warrior responds. Their fear—retched up as fury—wells up deep in the pool of their stomach.

Then there is silence, but for only the infinitesimally slow groaning of the earth shifting beneath them.

There is so little light to see by. A bitter contrast to the bleaching world above.

Pacing the paintings from wall to wall does little to demystify the thing, and so the warrior returns to the first spot, to the Big God, the wall-sized form with its fingerless arms wrapped round its heart.

“Are you lying to me?”, the warrior asks. The anger has subsided, but the fear—a child’s innocent, unexpecting fear—is fixed in their voice.

The man without shadow unfolds his arms and removes himself from his space of the wall with the too-long grace of a heron.

“That will have to be a matter of scale, dear Warrior.”

“Answer the godsdamned question.”

He smiles, coyly as ever. “Allow me.”

He casts his gaze up to the painted dyad, two beings in two hues, each in the posture of an embrace.

“Whether by my word or by your trials, you will learn of it. You will have to. Fortunately,” he whispers, a sound whose ripples turn loose the dust of dried paint flakes clinging to the most abused of the stone surfaces. “Your chains are undone. The Echo has spread through the cave, to you, and leads beyond.”

His golden eyes flicker for only a second. It looks something like sympathy, but gone so quickly, the warrior wonders if they’ve merely misread the angle of the antilight reflected there.

“Aught next relies on what you will do when the hands of your fate turn you to face the flame.”

The warrior grits their teeth. “And just how would this flame be new to me, exactly?”

“It is the flame that ever so dimly casts enough light to your surroundings… to give rise to shadows.” As if on-cue, the warrior’s eyes adjust again, taking in the utter failure of the ground to register the tall, enrobed figure standing upon it.

“What do you see, I wonder, when only a dimness of the cosms beyond you is there?” His mouth is set, unreadable, something grave. “Yet you can go further.”

He raises his palm to the mural again, to the shapes of buildings laved by starshowers. When he pulls it away, the red and the gold and the burnt-ash powders cling to the white of his glove. “You have been taunted before, I know this. But were your tormentors incorrect?”

He smiles, almost wan. “I think that they were not. A pity that the echoing throughout your chamber has made their tongues _lazy._ ”

The Ascian closes the distance between their bodies, his head tilted toward the warrior’s. “To put it in a way you will understand… Mmm. The cave, I think, was your beginning.”

A tired curiosity enters the warrior’s expression.

“Do you wish for freedom? To know how to _know_?”

They study his face, his eerie, statue-perfect face. “…I have to put the pieces together. This isn’t just about me!”

He studies them in turn, seeming somehow closer than before.

“Then shall I pull you upwards, to where the fullest of pictures may yet burn your eyes?”

The unformed chaos, the warrior thinks. Before gods flew over the face of the unformed chaos—unless it was only that gods were beseeched to fly there, to—

“Do it.”

As if to ascertain whether he is a mere hallucination, the dream of an answer, the warrior cautiously reaches to touch the shade’s cheek, finding warmth there; flesh and bone, there. At the skip of a heartbeat, he turns to brush his lips over their fingertips; to then turn to their face, to return the gesture.

“And if you are lying to me, may you sink into a hell deeper than my own.”

In the navel of the belly of the cave, the two figures upon the wall embrace.


End file.
